What If I Don't Wanna Try Anymore?
by ginnyinvisible
Summary: A Breaking Dawn AU. Jacob killed Edward when he found out Bella was pregnant. Bella tried to kill herself, and did not die but now lies in a coma. Will she ever be willing to face reality again?


**A Breaking Dawn AU. Jacob killed Edward when he found out Bella was pregnant. Bella tried to kill herself, and did not die but now lies in a coma. Will she ever be willing to face reality again? And what of the baby who will never exist if her mother fails to survive?**

When I was born, the first thing I saw was the girl.

She stood in front of me, with a sketchpad and a pencil, and her mouth was slightly open as if she was startled to see me. Her hair was long and auburn, falling over her shoulders in gleaming waves, and her eyes were deep chocolate, with a sparkle of gold. Her hand holding the pencil was slender, fingers tapered, and her skin pale. My skin was pale too - extremely pale. That was strange, like it had never been exposed to light.

I looked around me and everything was dark, pitch dark; I didn't know how it was possible that I could see her.

"Where did you come from?" she asked, and her voice was melodic, tinkling with a song I could hear behind the words. I named her in my mind, called her "Renesmee". What a strange name-- why had I picked that?

I replied, speaking what I knew to be true. "Nowhere, I was born just now."

She laughed, and her voice hardened into sarcastic scorn. "You weren't just born. You look just as old as I am, and _I'm_ fifteen. Are you crazy? Is that it? Did you escape from somewhere?"

"I don't know," I wondered. Was it possible to come from somewhere if you had only begun to exist a few seconds earlier?

"What's your name?"

"Bella," I responded. That sounded pretty. Was it really my name? I wasn't sure if it was the truth or I had just made it up. I guessed that if I had just been born here, appeared from nowhere, I had the right to pick my own name. No one else was going to pick it for me.

"That's a nice name. I'm Renesmee."

Of course. Of course her name was Renesmee.

She stood in the thickening silence, smiling awkwardly, as if trying to think of something to say. I stared back at her, not in the least discomfited.

"Why is there nothing here?" I asked, suddenly realizing that there was nothing around us, not even air or ground. Or light.

She looked confused. "Are you blind? We're standing in a park. You're next to a tree."

I looked for the tree, and as I looked for it, it appeared. What a strange world.

I imagined rough, gravely ground under my feet, and a fresh, salty breeze blowing through my hair. Immediately the uneven pebbles began to tickle my feet and the ends of my shoulder-length hair did the same to my cheeks.

"What is this place?"

She smiled sadly, and did not reply. Pulling her hair into a ponytail, she sat down on the tree stump that I saw as soon as I thought about it, flipped through a couple pages on her sketchbook, and began to draw.

Suddenly panic ran through me, and I leapt up. I hadn't noticed I was sitting on an identical stump. "Where am I? What kind of a place is this?" I cried out sharply, watching her face. "How can it be that things appear when I think of them? That's impossible. That's not real. Is this place not real?"

She looked up, resigned. "Of course it is real, in that sense of the word. You're here, aren't you?"

"Are you real?"

"Not really."

My face showed my confusion.

"You see, this place is the Land of What Does Not Exist. This is the blank slate, everything that could happen, but doesn't... the beginning that will never become a story. So you could say that this place, this whole park isn't real, because it doesn't really exist. You see, you can't even see it anymore, because we're not thinking of it."

It was true, as I looked around, the ground, the tree, the stumps we had been sitting on were gone. Her sketchbook and pencil were still in her hands, though.

"That's why it's so dark," she added. "Light can't exist in this place. Because light is the most real thing out there."

"So I'm not real?"

"Well, I guess you were real. The way you just popped out of nowhere like you did. But all your real memories are gone, because now you don't exist. You're just here."

"Are you real? Were you real?"

"I'm different. I didn't just appear. I've always been here. I've always not existed, because I was just a potential. I was never actually going to exist."

"So how come you're only fifteen?"

"Time doesn't exist here either. There's no such thing as being old. I'm just fifteen because that's how I am right now. Or how I'm not, I guess. Time isn't relative here, you know. It's not like we're going to get older or die. We already don't exist."

I stopped asking questions then, stopping to think.

So I had once existed, then? I only remembered being born, the beginning of existence. Or nonexistence. Where was I from? I had to be from somewhere. I remembered the light. I remembered that it wasn't normal for everything to be dark, a "blank slate". Just empty space, waiting for us to make something real out of it, like the park. It seemed abnormal, so I must have known something different.

"The Dark is formed by shadows the Light creates, and if there was no Dark no one would notice the Light," Renesmee suddenly intoned solemnly.

"What's that?"

"It's something someone said when they were passing through. Can't remember who they were. They were real, all right, just passing through. I don't think they even knew that they were nonexistent for a little while. They probably didn't make it up themselves, it sounds like one of those quotes famous things people say a lot. Whoever made it up, though, they sound like they've been here. They're describing this place, at least. People know about this place, you know. They write about it, in books, famous books. 'In the beginning there was darkness,'" she quoted.

I hadn't really listened to most of what she said. "So you can go back to reality?" Could I?

"You can," she said, grimacing nastily. "If you actually existed once. I wouldn't be able to, where would I go?"

"Where did you come from, then? I mean, who would you have been if you had existed? Why did you never exist?"

"Sometimes it happens. Quite common, actually. I could have happened. The chances was in my favor. But someone changed their mind, or something." Her voice turned bitter, louder. "Someone didn't want me, decided they weren't going to have a baby after all, decided they didn't want to bring me into the world. Maybe they thought they were doing what was best for me, that their life was so horrible they didn't want me to join it. But didn't they realize, that now that I was an idea, but was never going to exist, I'd have to_not_ exist for the rest of eternity, in this horrible place?"

I shrank back. "Is it really that horrible?"

"Oh, there's nothing _wrong_ with it, really. But its a bit dismal, isn't it, a bit depressing, to have to just sit here, doing nothing, and knowing you aren't real?"

It did sound depressing.

"Oh, you can hide it from yourself, of course. A lot of people do that. I see them, making lives for themselves like the park I showed you, families, jobs, cities... Eventually they force themselves to think that their little mirages are the real thing, are reality, and its easy enough, seeing as how none of us have seen the real thing. To remember it, anyway. But after a while, it just all falls apart, because, you know, you have to keep thinking its real, keep believing it, to keep it there. And no one can believe in something for eternity, especially when it never brings you what it promises.

"I'm terrible at it, you know, can't hold something together for more than five minutes. I guess the only thing I can actually keep is my sketchbook, because that's what I'm always doing, always thinking about it. Beyond that, who cares? I know its just a dark, empty world. I know there's nothing, actually, that I'm nothing, that it doesn't exist. What's the point in trying to lie to myself?"

I didn't answer.

"_You_ can exist for me, though, for a while. You just came in from the other side. By the way, you didn't die. Or maybe you did. But just that won't do it. Not many people just stop existing, once they've already started, I mean. I think it has to do with just giving up. And that's pretty irresponsible, _I_ think. But you can't remember any of it anyway, so I'm not going to blame you. I'm going to draw you, I guess."

She stepped back, and got me to sit down on the reappeared stump. I posed for her, forcing a smile, leaning back, letting my hair flow back in the gust of wind I conjured with my thoughts. She drew me, and it took some time. It was strange to know that time didn't exist, that she could take as much time as she wanted, and it wouldn't matter, because time wasn't real here, either.

When she finished, she immediately ripped the page out of her notebook and gave it to me. As I looked at it, she did as well, peering over my shoulder.

I was sitting, not on the stump but on the ground. My face was puzzled, my knees pulled up to my chest. I looked older than fifteen, older than I thought I looked. My clothes were torn, and bruises covered my bare skin. My arms were held in a position like I was supposed to be holding something in them, but they were empty, and instead that area of the page was bright and unshaded, like it was shining brightly.

"That's strange," Renesmee murmured, her mouth inches from my ear as she gazed down onto her drawing. "I wonder what that means."

"You drew it, didn't you?" I tore my eyes away from the drawing. "Don't you know what you drew? Anyway, that wasn't how I was posing."

"Yeah, I know," she said, still not looking away from the picture. "I try to draw beyond what I see. I don't always know how it will come out. If I had existed, I would probably have been an interpretive artist."

"You're good," I mumbled. I didn't like seeing me covered in bruises. Was that how I had looked when I was real?

"Not really. That's not what I meant, not that way. But I like drawing. And I can pull the... well, _existence_ out of someone with these drawings. Or maybe I'm just pretending to myself. Either way, this one is strange. You have any idea what this means?"

"No." I stood up, grabbing the paper and crumpling it.

"Don't do that!" She snatched it back, smoothing it out and setting it down on the ground. "Just forget about it, and it'll disappear. If you want it again, just remember it."

"Okay."

She stood a while, still looking down at the drawing, then seemed to remember I was still there. "You should find something for yourself to do, you know. Like my drawings. Otherwise you'll get bored."

"Like what? Does it matter?"

"Yes, it has to be like my drawings, it has to connect you to reality. Otherwise you're going to lose yourself even more in this place. And you don't want to do that." I fell silent, and, after watching me for a moment, she went back to drawing a bench, overgrown with ivy.

What was I to do in this place? I didn't have any talents, unless I imagined them and made them true. But I guessed that didn't count, if I was trying to connect with reality. Did I really want to go back, to that place I didn't remember? I could make a fake life here, couldn't I? It would probably be better than the real one I had had, there must have been a reason why I had stopped existing. And I liked Renesmee. It didn't seem fair that people had to spend eternity in this place, doing nothing, for ages while other people had lives.

But they had a choice, didn't they? They had had a choice, back when they were in the other life, the real life. And they had decided not to. They had decided they wanted this life. Was that what I wanted? To hide in this place, where I could make a dream world for myself, even though I knew it wasn't real? Was it really better? What if I still had a choice? What if I could go back, if I really wanted it? Renesmee had said "You can, if you really existed once." I must have existed once. I wasn't like Renesmee, the potential that someone had decided against. I cringed, thinking of how someone had doomed her to this life... how would it have hurt them to let her exist? Renesmee, such a pretty girl, just my age, with her long brown hair and sparkling eyes. She deserved to exist, much more than I did, I who had made the choice to not exist. But I, I_had_ existed. Maybe I could have a second chance.

"How do I do it?" My voice broke the silence, and Renesmee looked up from her sketchbook.

"Do what?"

"Go back."

She sighed. "It sounds easy."

I waited.

"You have to make the light real." She bit her lip and turned away.

Make the light real? That _was_ easy. I just had to imagine it.

But what did it look like again? Suddenly the image was hard to pull up. I knew that the darkness was wrong, that the opposite of darkness was light... but what did it look like? If you tried to describe lightness to someone, what would you say? It's white, shines?

I stood up and made a patch of white on the ground, but it just looked insignificant, just a white patch on the ground. I stopped imagining it and let it fade away.

I looked around, looked at the dark park that had reappeared around us, and it was all dark. All there was. I could tell that if I walked around the fence, kept walking, there would never be anything more. Nothing I could look at and recall light.

I strained to remember. I knew light had existed in the old life. It was true, it was real. So how could it exist here, in the land of nonexistence? It was impossible. This was a futile quest.

My face crumpled with despair and I sat back down.

Renesmee looked up, and I realized she had been watching me through her long, uneven bangs. "Yeah. I've tried too. It doesn't work. The closest I can get is through my drawings."

"Your drawings? What do you mean?"

"Don't you see? I'm trying to create a window, a way in. I'm trying to draw real things, like the plants, like you... trying to get it to let me be real. But it doesn't work.

"You know what I think would work? If I could draw a self portrait of myself. I think that would work, because my drawings show the real thing, and if I make them show the real me, then I'd _know_ the real me, and then I'd exist.

"But it doesn't work, because I don't know what I look like. I've never existed, so I've never actually _looked_ like anything. Just like you can't imagine the light."

"But I can see you!" I exclaimed. "I can see what you look like!"

"Yes, but that's not real. That's just how you imagine me. I'm not real, I'm just whatever you make me look like in your eyes, because I don't exist beyond your imagination. Like everything else here."

I remembered how I had whimsically called her Renesmee in my mind, and that was what her name had turned out to be.

I looked at her face, her soft, sarcastic mouth, her loose, auburn hair falling into her eyes. Was this all pretend, out of my imagination? No, she was too real... like she belonged in reality, just like I did.

"Renesmee," I whispered, "who would you have been?" _If you existed_, I added silently.

She smiled sadly. "You probably don't want to know."

"Why not? Tell me."

She met my eyes squarely, stiffening her indecision. "I am your daughter."

I gaped, brain deadened, confused. My _daughter_? The word was foreign, impossible. "I don't have a daughter."

"Exactly," she replied tonelessly. She bowed her head and her hair fell like a curtain over her face, so she didn't have to look at me, and I couldn't see her expression.

How could she be my daughter? I was fifteen, she was exactly my age. But time was relative here. I was just fifteen though! Not old enough to be a mother. Was I? I remembered her drawing- how I had looked older than I was here. Was I older in reality? Did I have a daughter? No, I didn't, I didn't have a daughter... because she was here.

Then she tossed her head back, and I saw her eyes, chocolate with a sparle of gold.

I looked into her eyes, bright as they looked back into mine, glinting with despair. I saw them, knowing the truth, knowing whose they really were, and remembered. This, the golden sparkle lighting them up, this was light.

And I closed my eyes, letting my vision fill with the bright, piercing, glowing light of her eyes.

It was like I was being pulled from the shadow into the sunlight, finally taking off the sunglasses. Like I had been asleep, unconscious, dead, and had just awoken, opened my eyes to see the world, lit up with light.

No, it was more than that, it was special, a miracle. Like I was being pulled through a fire, but the brightest, beautifullest, most exhilarating blaze that had ever existed. And I came out, and my eyes burned like I had been staring at an eclipse.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Bella! You're awake!" A female doctor leaned over me, eyes astounded and delighted. "She's awake!" she called out of the hospital room.

"Where am I? Am I alive?" I looked around, blinking, unaccustomed to the white, artificial ceiling light.

"Yes," the doctor soothed, "although it was very close for a while."

"I'm alive," I whispered, and fell silent for a while.

Then, the human sensation of curiosity came back to me, and I asked, "What happened?"

"You've been here for a while. You jumped off of a cliff four months ago, sweetheart, and you've been in a coma ever since. We weren't sure whether you'd survive, and the baby's chances were very slim. Now you're conscious, however, I'm sure both of you will live."

Baby? "The baby?"

"Yes, you're pregnant, and will probably give birth within a few days. It's a miracle, although it always is, isn't it?"

I couldn't speak.

"Dr. Larsen has checked you out with Ultrasound," she added, "and the child is a girl." _A baby_. "What do you think you will name her?"

I didn't need to think about it. The decision had already been made.

"Renesmee."

You will exist.

**I had already written this story a while ago but I wanted to get some opinions on it. So I changed the names and situation, and it pretty much fits for a BD AU. Please review and tell me what you think? Sort of a companion to "What Would Never Exist", about the two children who never existed because Bella never got together with Jacob.**


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